Timeline of Events in Dou's Time

Holland

1575   University of Leiden founded as a reward to the city, which withstood the siege of the Spanish in 1573-1574

1589   Willem of Orange (William the Silent) assassinated in Delft

1602   East Indies Company chartered

1606   Rembrandt (1606-1609) born in Leiden

1609-1621   Twelve Years Truce between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands

1613   Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) born in Leiden

1621   West Indies Company chartered

1625-1648   Prince Frederick Hendrick (1584-1647) is stadhouder (chief magistrate) in the Netherlands

1642   Philips Angel's Praise of Painting published in Leiden, with tributes to Dou

1642   Rembrandt paints The Night Watch

1648   Guild of Saint Luke founded in Leiden

1648   Treaty of Westphalia marks end of Eighty Years War

1650   Willem II (1626-1650) is stadhouder in the Netherlands

1652-1654   First Anglo-Dutch War

1653   Johan de Witt (1625-1672) becomes leader of the Dutch Republic

1660   Dutch government includes Dou's Young Mother in a gift to celebrate restoration of Charles II to the British throne

1661   Vermeer paints View of Delft

1665-1667   Second Anglo-Dutch War

1672   The Netherlands invaded by the French army

1672   Johan de Witt assassinated; Willem III (1650-1702) becomes stadhouder

1672-1673   Dutch defeat the French

1678   The Peace of Nijmegen ends the war with France

Europe and North America

1607   First colony in North America founded at Jamestown

1610   Galileo uses telescope to prove theories of Copernicus

1620   Pilgrims arrive in North America

1625   Charles I becomes king of England

1636   Harvard College founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts

1637   Descartes writes Discourse on Method in Paris

1648   The Royal Academy of Painting founded in Paris

1659   Louis XIV (Sun King) and Maria Teresa of Spain are married

1666   Great Fire of London

1667   John Milton writes Paradise Lost